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Bill and Hillary Clinton — Black Women Ain’t Your “Mammy”

Were Bill and Hillary Clinton up to their old liberal racists tricks? Again.

Bear with us.

Last week, on a Tuesday, with Hillary Clinton’s presidential prospects on the line, Bill Clinton opted to take matters into his own hands and scheduled a “chance meeting” with U. S. attorney general Loretta Lynch.

Completely coincidental, right?

Maybe he decided to meet with her to express how much in awe he is at the wonderful job she’s doing as attorney general. Because that’s just the kind of former president he is.

Riiiiight.

Reports claimed that the two exchanged zero words on what was then an active FBI investigation into the Clinton e-mails. If we agree not to speculate — what exactly was said in that meeting we’ll never know — then we have little choice but to reluctantly believe them.

We do know that once upon a time, Bill Clinton nominated Lynch to US attorney general in Brooklyn, which was a huge boost to her career and ultimately led to her current position. That was 1999.

We know that in addition to appointing a “diverse Cabinet” filled with women, gays, and POCs, in her first 100 days in office, Hillary might — just might — keep on the nation’s first Black woman attorney general — appointed in April 2015 — in her coveted role as attorney general.

And we know that today, a Tuesday, a week later, FBI has decided it will not pursue criminal charges against Hillary Clinton for her involvement in the e-mail controversy that has been a plague on her campaign since March of last year.

Clinton had been suspected of violating state regulations when, as Secretary of State, she used her personal e-mail account to conduct official government business, much of which was “sensitive” and retroactively sealed classified. FBI director James Comey, who called Clinton’s actions “extremely careless,” nevertheless concluded that federal authorities “did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information.”

None of this feels right. Not in the least bit.

Even if you believed, from the beginning, that all the focus on these “damn e-mails” amounted to hogwash, even if you brushed off the reports that claimed the Democratic National Committee collaborated with Clinton camp in a concerted effort to ensure the nomination for Clinton, when the husband of a suspect of a federal investigation, that just so happens to be Democratic presidential nominee and establishment favorite, meets with the sitting attorney general at the helm of said investigation, that is definitely undeniably cause for serious concern.

It’s cause for concern when said nominee says she’ll consider, as president-elect, keeping said attorney general in her post.

It’s especially problematic if that attorney general just so happens to be a Black woman.

For good or ill, race has, and seems destined to always be, the silent specter in the long, controversial history of the Clinton political empire.

Bill is the “first Black president” with a penchant for looking “cool” as he plays the saxophone. Hillary does the “nae nae” and carries hot sauce in her “swag bag.” All is gravy in raceland. Until,

… you realize that Mr. Saxophone and Ms. Nae Nae tacitly pigeonholed Blacks as “superpredators”, escalated the mass criminalization and incarceration of Black men and women, gutted the Welfare system, castigated black women as “welfare queens,” all of which had the culminating effect of collapsing black lives.

They even suggested, back in 2008, that Obama was a Jesse Jackson who wouldn’t resonate with working class whites.

Now, lest our optics deceive us, it looks as though The Clintons have, by their actions over the past few days, attempted to turn attorney general Lynch into a “mammy,” a loyal, soothing, trustworthy, supportive Black house servant who, on the surface, appears to cater to the establishment and only cares about pleasing and appeasing its masters, at the expense of the people.

More importantly, in white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, the mythical “mammy” is the scapegoat, or fall person, for larger, systemic problems:

Antwan is an educator, cultural critic, actor, and writer for Wear Your Voice Mag (WYV), where he focuses on the dynamics of class, race, gender, politics, and pop culture. Prior to joining the team at WYV, he was an adjunct professor in the African American Studies Department at Valdosta State University in southern Georgia, where he taught African American Literature. He has traveled the U.S. and U.K. showcasing a fifty-five minute, one-person play titled Whitewash, which focuses on the state of black men in the post-civil rights era. Antwan received his B.A. in English and Literature from California State University, Dominguez Hills, and M.A. in African American Studies from University of California, Los Angeles. He is a Ronald E. McNair Scholar and NAACP theater nominee.